A team of Texas archeologists funded by the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute claimed to have found the key to finding Noah's Ark: a petrified wooden ship in a remote Elburz mountain north of Tehran, Iran.

At 13,000 feet up, Cornuke said he believes he found just that in a 400 foot long object they found that they believe appeared similar to the Bible's description of the Ark.

(Revtim wrote" Even if the ark story is literally true, the wood wouldnâ€™t be petrified. It takes millions of years, not thousands.")

The idea that it takes millions of years for wood to petrify is false. As is usually the case with such geological phenomena, the actual process has very little to do with the amount of time available, but instead demands the right conditions.

There are several documented instancesâ€”in the laboratory and in natureâ€”in which wood was petrified in just a few months or years.

Sorry Revtim but I just hate it when someone who has no clue what they're talking about adds conjecture without first doing a little fact checking. (Just because you can blog doesn't mean you should)

In my youth, I would have been content with the "Noah's Ark" conjecture. Of course, having researched this sort of thing for years, I find that any attempt to claim that an archaeological discovery "proves" a Biblical account is an example of the "if-then" fallacy (in logic).

Revtim's right about how long it takes for wood to petrify. A sample several thousands of years old might be rather heavy with absorbed minerals, but it would still be a long way from petrification.

Also, remember that the entire region is prone to flooding, and was even more prone in the past (when it was a little less arid). To people who mostly never traveled more than 50 miles from their birthplace, a major flood might seem to have engulfed the whole world.

Noah's Ark is not the only "Ark" story out there, either. Greek mythology includes a similar tale as part of the Prometheus story. The Babylonian epic "Gilgamesh" includes a flood story in which the Noah-like hero builds a wooden cube stocked with all sorts of animals. Frankly, in a region that got flooded like that, most people would have kept a boat for emergencies. Some would probably have built larger boats so they could save their livestock as well. There may be the remains of several "arks" scattered among the mountains; a large craft would have been impossible to steer and could easily have run aground.

As for the elevation --- plate tectonics. Those mountains weren't quite so high thousands of years ago. Earthquakes and volcanoes have plagued the region in the past, and pushed the mountains higher, and the debris along with them. (If you want another Biblical connection, there's your fire & brimstone that rained down on Sodom & Gomorrah. Does that mean these "sin cities" existed? We don't know. But in those days, the general consensus was that any city wiped out by a volcano must have been wicked and offended the gods or God. Fortunately, we don't think this way any more. Oh, wait, those people who claimed that New Orleans was "wicked" so that they wouldn't have to apologize for allowing the levees to deteriorate or have to actually work to help rebuild...)